The Bended Knee

The Chicago Tribune's Colonel Robert R. McCormick, whose whirlwind trip through Latin America has already been marked by banquets and speeches in half a dozen countries (and by a small fire in his private plane as it flew over Colombia), reached a new high in Argentina. He and his wife were honor guests at a four-hour luncheon at the Buenos Aires country place of Juan Peron. After lunch, Juan gave Bertie a medal, a diploma and a well-phrased pat on the back: "This medal ... is presented to honest men. I award it to you as an honest man who directs honest institutions which report the news of Argentina and Latin America honestly and accurately."

Gretchen Fraser, Vancouver, Wash, housewife who swept women's skiing honors at the winter Olympics last year, took a practical view of one of her trophies. "It's a lovely medal," she said thoughtfully, "but it's too heavy to wear and it won't make a good ashtray. What can you do with six ounces of pure gold?"

Among the 24 people and institutions nominated for the 1949 Nobel Peace Prize ("every candidate [must] be proposed in writing by some duly qualified person"): Eleanor Roosevelt, Columnist Drew Pearson, Juan Peron and wife Eva.

The Solid Flesh

Representative J. Parnell Thomas collapsed in his Washington hotel room from another gastrointestinal hemorrhage, had to be rushed back to Walter Reed Hospital in an ambulance three weeks after the doctors had let him out to convalesce.

The C.I.O.'s Philip Murray was discharged from Pittsburgh's Mercy Hospital after an emergency appendectomy and 19 days' convalescence.

In Paris, the Ago Khan checked into the American Hospital for a prostate operation and a month's recuperation.

In Boston, Beatrice Lillie came down with an upset stomach, had to call off one evening's performance of the touring Inside U.S.A. The management refunded $5,500 to 1,700 disappointed playgoers.

The Furrowed Brow

"I have a hundred more novels that I would like to write," confessed Margaret Mitchell, whose Gone With the Wind has sold over six million copies in 13 years. The trouble is, "the business details of my first book still take all my time. Nobody believes that, but it is true."

Mae West, 57, recalled the old days when the word "sex" was rarely spoken aloud ("It wasn't polite to give it my meaning"). But she bears no real resentment toward Professor Alfred Kinsey: "That guy merely makes it easy for me," she assured Columnist Robert C. Ruark. "Now I don't have to draw 'em any blueprints . . . We are both in the same business . . . Except I saw it first."

Major General William J. ("Wild Bill") Donovan, wartime boss of the OSS, announced in Los Angeles: "It's not a cold war. It's a damn hot one."

"I was not mad at anybody," insisted Jesse Jones, explaining his desertion to the Republicans during the November election. "I just thought we needed a change. Always takes a new set of rascals a while longer to learn the combination to the safe."

The Old Gang

Beniamino Gigli, 58, still one of the world's great tenors, who left the Met in 1939 ("I do not like America ... A general air of nervousness, cheapness and corruption") to go back to Fascist Italy, waited until 35 minutes before curtain time in London, then canceled a concert because of laryngitis. The crowd of 8,000 disappointed music lovers milled around the locked doors of Royal Albert Hall, jamming traffic for almost an hour before an extra force of bobbies could persuade them to go home.

Gloria Swanson, 50, high-styled, onetime queen of the silent screen, had not yet faded from the Hollywood scene; she was back to act in a picture called Sunset Boulevard, her first movie in eight years. Her new role: a fading queen of the silent screen.

Jane Cowl, 64, veteran of 38 years on Broadway, decided to stop resisting; she signed up to act in the movies for the first time since The Spreading Dawn in 1917 (in 1943's Stage Door Canteen she played herself). Her role: the managing mama of Robert Montgomery, 44.

Jim Londos, 49, who first claimed the world's heavyweight wrestling title back in 1930, figured the phony old game was really going to the dogs: "There are too many freaks . . . too many men who rely on hairdos and perfume." Said he: "I am still champion ... I have decided to wrestle again because I want to help clean out the sport."

Josephine Baker, 43, irrepressible U.S.-born chanteuse, was rehearsing for her first postwar Folies Bergere. The angular grace, the crossed-eyes mugging and full-throated hollering seemed like the old Jo, even under considerably more costume than the girdle of bananas which first made her the light brown toast of Paris 23 years ago.

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